


Unclean Spirits

by honeybeehum



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (Victorian attitudes regarding Inuit religious beliefs), (again not much but it's there), (not much but it's there), Ableist Language, Amputation, Animal Death, Body Horror, Gore, Horror, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25930039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybeehum/pseuds/honeybeehum
Summary: Nunavut is sick; a strange malady has infected its plants and animals. Francis suspects he knows what is at the root of it, and seeks out Silna for her help in finding the cure. Their search reunites them with departed friends and brings them face-to-face with their past--a past that they will have to relinquish if they want to secure Nunavut’s future.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 16
Kudos: 36
Collections: The Terror Big Bang 2020





	1. The Caribou

**Author's Note:**

> This story was beautifully illustrated by [@dedraconesilet](https://dedraconesilet.tumblr.com/). You can see and reblog her illustrations [here!](https://dedraconesilet.tumblr.com/post/627519600281714688/art-for-unclean-spirits-by-honeybeehum-nunavut-is)
> 
> I would like to thank dedraconesilet not only for her stunning art, but also for her helpful comments, suggestions, and encouraging words. Her input made this a better story than I could have made it alone.

* * *

The first signs of the caribou’s return in late summer were greeted with relief by the hunting party. Francis felt his chest lighten as his companions smiled and laughed with joy. A muted joy perhaps--the hunters took care not to frighten away their quarry--but joy deeply felt nonetheless.

It had been a difficult year for the Netsilik, and Francis was gratified to see that their luck might finally be turning. During his first winter with them, after surviving for months on nothing more than carefully rationed Goldner's tins and sheer, pig-headed stubbornness, the frozen fish and fresh seal meat were a revelation, and going to sleep each night with a stomach if not full, then at least not cavernous with want, was a blessing. A guilty one, as it was difficult whenever he ate not to think of the men he left starving on the shale, but Francis's guilt never ruined his appetite, no matter how much he wished it would in his blacker moods.

The comparative plenty of that first winter gave way, unexpectedly, perversely, to a lean spring. The hunting parties that would leave to search for game often returned frustrated and with empty sledges. More worryingly, the berries and lichens that grew throughout the rocky ground were slow to appear, and patchy and anemic when they finally did.The children returned each day disheartened with empty pouches and bellies. When the summer camp disbanded into smaller family camps for the winter, Francis became reacquainted with the hunger that had been his constant companion on the walk out from the ships.

But now, caribou, and with caribou, hope. Francis turned to grin at Ujarak, who slapped him on the shoulder as he laughed.

"I hope you're ready for your first hunt, uncle!"

Ujarak was a man of about 30 years, and was one of the first men of the camp to welcome Francis into the community. While the Netsilik, true to Francis's former experiences with them--former experiences in a former life, almost a dream to him now--were willing to share their food and provide him with a warm place to sleep, there was a wariness to their interactions with him now that he had never previously noticed. The children scurried away at his approach, hiding themselves behind their mother's legs or within the shaded openings of their family's hide tents.

When Francis had asked Ujarak about this, he had responded shortly, without any of his usual teasing humor.

"They have learned what happens to an Inuk who approaches a white man without due caution."

A child’s lifeless body in the snow. Silna’s tears. Francis had ducked his head as the old guilt, ever present and simmering beneath the surface, suddenly bubbled up in a fury within his chest. Not only had he failed to save his men, to be the leader they had needed him to be, but the consequences of his failures had also rippled out beyond the crew and harmed those he had never even met.

The worst kind of first, indeed.

There was no reproach in Ujarak's gaze now as he smiled at Francis, and Francis tried to shake himself and return to the moment. The initial excitement of the hunting party was now calming as the men began to discuss their plan of approach. 

Although Francis, with his one hand, could not fire an arrow, he was still able to contribute to the hunt. Hiking to the end of the valley opposite to where the caribou were currently grazing, the hunters built a short tunnel of stone cairns. Soon Francis was sweating through his fur, and he and some of the others removed their coats as the sun reached its apex. Under Sivuugun’s critical eye, they gathered stones and stacked them to create two low walls running parallel to each other at the mouth of the valley. Once finished, Sivuugun inspected their work, moving backward a few paces and cocking his head to one side contemplatively as he surveyed the work before him.

Francis hid a grin. He felt like nothing so much as a young midshipman standing at attention while his commanding officer inspected the state of his berth. He almost turned to Ujarak to say as much before he faltered, the Netsilik words ill-fitting on his tongue. How could he make Ujarak understand this feeling? Was there a Netsilik analogue to presenting yourself for inspection? Certainly the words "midshipman" or "commanding officer" had no direct translation.

Suddenly the chasm separating Francis from the men gathered around him opened wide. The solidarity he had felt grunting and sweating in the midday sun as he and the others worked toward a common goal evaporated like the sweat cooling on the back of his neck, leaving him cold and shivering and feeling as lost as he had felt his first winter on the ice. What was he, to these men? A cripple with no people, no past, and an uncertain future. If the men he had known and the things he had done existed only within his own mind, could they be said to exist at all?

Sometimes Francis's past life felt like nothing more than a dream conjured by his fevered mind while he had been under Silna's care.

"Good,” Sivuugun at last declared. “We will split up now. Ujarak, ready your bow and stay here with me. Siku, you take Taktuq and Francis. Show them what to do."

Sivuugun's pronouncements snapped Francis out of his gloom, and he sighed as he shrugged his coat and pack on over his shoulders and turned to follow Siku. Not many of his experiences in the Navy translated to his new life in Nunavut, but the ability to follow orders wasn't one of them.

"Good luck, uncle!" Ujarak said as he walked past Francis. "Try to keep up with the young bucks."

"And you concentrate on keeping that wagging jaw shut," Francis retorted. "Or you'll scare away our dinner." 

Ujarak laughed in reply. As he drew closer he lowered his voice and said, “Watch out for him, please.” Francis followed Ujarak’s gaze to his son Taktuq, who at fifteen was on his first hunt and anxious to prove himself. 

Francis nodded. “Of course.”

Siku explained the plan as he, Francis, and Taktuq trekked up the valley. They would circle around behind the caribou as they made their way across the valley, while Sivuugun and Ujarak would hide in wait behind the cairns they had built at the opposite end. By whooping and howling at the tops of their lungs, they would frighten the flighty caribou and drive them through the cairn tunnel, behind which Sivuugun and Ujarak would crouch with bows at the ready to shoot the caribou as they galloped through. It took a great deal of skill and no small amount of luck to fell these beasts, Francis knew, but by working together in this way, they might be able to bring home two or even three of these creatures.

"Make your voices as fearsome as you can," Siku instructed as they came within sight of the caribou and positioned themselves low to the ground. "The caribou's most feared enemy is the wolf, and we must trick them into thinking he is hot on their heels. I will hide on the opposite side of the valley--by that hillock there--to make sure we drive them toward the cairn. Wait here for my signal."

Siku loped off, keeping low to the ground, leaving Francis alone with Taktuq. The boy was shy, and Francis did not think he had said more than ten words to Francis since they had met, but he was tense with excitement beside him.

"Your first hunt?" Francis asked, even though he knew it was.

The boy glanced quickly at Francis and then away, toward the herd, as though nervous to be suddenly entering into conversation with his people's strange charity case.

"Yes." The boy's flat tone seemed designed to discourage further inquiry.

"Mm. Mine as well."

They watched the herd in silence for a few minutes. Up close, Francis could see that the winter had not been kind to them, either. Their shaggy grey coats hung off sharp shoulder blades and prominent rib bones. It was not one of the massive migratory herds that Francis had heard tell of, but a much smaller group of about ten or twelve. Francis had lost sight of Siku, and he wondered what sign the man was waiting for to begin the roust. One minute to the other didn't make much difference in Francis's eyes--the caribou continued to lip at the scrubby vegetation by their feet in ignorant contentment. As the minutes went by, Taktuq kept shifting at Francis's side, his nervous fidgeting increasing as the stillness stretched on.

"I must admit, I am a bit nervous," Francis said, adopting a confessional tone, although revealing his anxiety to the boy next to him admittedly did not take much acting on his part.

Taktuq glanced down at the bone-tipped spear he clutched in his hands for protection.

"You should not be nervous. Siku will guide us, and the others will bring down the caribou."

"You are right. I suppose I'm just worried I'll embarrass myself. I am not as young and spry as I used to be, you know. And even old men can fall victim to vanity." 

Taktuq turned fully toward Francis then, his eyes dark half-moons looking to Francis for reassurance. Francis's heart squeezed painfully in his chest.

"I am worried I'll shame my father," he admitted. "I was so eager to come on this hunt, to make him proud and prove I'm no longer a boy. But now...all these worries crowd into my mind and I can't remember any of his advice. What if I make a fool of myself? Or get hurt? Or ruin the hunt? I want him to look at me with pride at the end of the day."

This was the longest speech Francis had ever heard Taktuq make. He took a chance and reached out to clasp Taktuq's arm. He didn't pull away.

"He will, lad. You just follow your own advice--follow Siku's lead and the others will take care of the rest. And if you stick by me, no one will notice any mistakes you make, so distracted they'll be by my own clumsiness."

Taktuq returned Francis's encouraging smile with a hesitant one of his own. He looked about to say something else, but suddenly a howl from Siku's hiding place split the air and the hunt was on.

Taktuq and Francis jumped up from their hiding spot, whooping and hollering as loudly as they could while taking off toward the herd of caribou before them. Siku was swooping down toward them from the opposite direction across the valley, and the cacophony they created, their voices rebounding against the walls of the valley, sounded more ferocious than Francis had anticipated.

Clearly the caribou thought so, too, because with a jolt, they sprang forward in a rush toward the opposite end of the valley, where the cairn tunnel was, and the notched and waiting bows of their archers. Francis could see it in the distance, could see the caribou as they far outstripped Francis and the other rousters, still howling, their hooves clattering against the rocky ground. As the herd reached the cairn, the caribou began to separate like a river splitting into smaller streams, running like water around the stone obstruction. Some caribou peeled off to either side of the cairn, making their way toward open ground and safety, but two does and one of the bucks shot down the path laid out for them by the stone walls.

"Hah!" Francis crowed with what little remaining breath he had, slowing to a jog and pressing his hand against the stitch in his side. 

"No time for rest now," Siku chided as he trotted ahead. "Have your spears ready. Let's see if the others need our help."

As though in response to Siku's statement, a bellow rose up from the other end of the wall. Francis groaned but ran after the two younger men who bounded across the scrubby terrain toward the commotion. For a moment after Francis crested the hill he saw the scene before him as though viewing a tableau vivant: “Netsilik men on the hunt.” He registered the two slain does on the ground by the opening of the wall, but the remaining caribou, the buck, had not been felled by their arrows--Francis could see one had pierced his left haunch and another protruded from his breast. The buck's nostrils flared as he heaved great plumes of breath into the cold air. His eyes rolled in his sockets and he stamped his hooves on the packed snow beneath him. But what arrested Francis's attention, what had caused him to pull up short next to Siku and Taktuq who were similarly paralyzed, was the dark fluid that oozed from the caribou's wounds, to stain the brown and white fur a sticky black.

"What is that?" Francis gasped as soon as he had breath to speak. He looked over at Siku to shed light on the matter, but only saw the same shock on Siku's face that must have been on his own.

"Get back! Don't go near it!" Sivuugun shouted at Ujarak and Siku, who had taken up their spears, and were warily watching the frantic animal. They began to back away, never taking their eyes off the buck, when it suddenly lowered its head and leapt after them. Taktuq cried out as he watched his father dive out of the way of the antlers that swiped through the space in which he had stood only a second ago. Taktuq leapt forward, brandishing his spear, but Francis caught him by the elbow before he could get his fool head cracked open by shaking antlers or flailing hooves.

"Let go of me!"

"Easy, lad. We'll circle round back."

Francis and Taktuq followed Siku, who was already circling around behind the beast. The men fanned out, enclosing the injured animal in their center. The wind shifted and suddenly Francis was inhaling the smell of death and decay, the close, still air of the sick tent, the breath that rattled out of his lungs as he lay gasping on the cot. Francis took a steadying breath to quell his nausea and brought his focus back to the present. The dark ooze, thick and black as tar, dripped onto the ground, where, rather than pooling on the packed snow, seemed to wriggle and writhe its way beneath the icy surface to the earth below. The caribou's fur was greasy with the foul stuff, and as he whipped his head from side to side to follow the hunter's movements, thick droplets were flung through the air toward the men.

The buck suddenly lunged for Ujarak. Francis sprang forward and thrust his spear as hard as he could into its haunch, near where the arrow had already pierced its hide. A gush of the rotten fluid streamed from the wound and the animal screamed in pain, rearing up on its hind legs. Taktuq rushed forward under the flailing hooves and thrust upward with all his might into the animal's belly. The fluid poured forth from the wound, and with a speed that looked to Francis's eyes like malignant purpose, seeped over the boy's hand.

Taktuq wrenched his hand away and staggered back as the caribou fell heavily to its knees then collapsed onto its side with a deep, despairing groan.

Taktuq started to scream. Ujarak ran over to his son as he fell to his knees.

"What's wrong, Taktuq? What's hurt?"

"My hand! It burns, it burns! Get it off!"

Francis, Sivuugun, and Siku had run over and formed a semi-circle around the pair by this point. Taktuq held his arm out from his body, white knuckled hand gripping his elbow and his face twisted in agony as another shriek pierced the air. Ujarak reached for his son's hand, when Siku cried out.

"Wait!"

The men watched in horror as the liquid that had adhered to Taktuq's flesh began to ooze past his wrist and up his forearm. Taktuq's screams grew louder and more panicked.

"What's happening? Get it off! Get it off me!"

"What do I do?"

"Don't touch it!"

"How do we stop it?"

The ooze was approaching the boy's elbow. He had slumped in his father's arms but his screams still filled Francis's ears. Francis unbuckled the ax on his belt.

"Put him on the ground,” he ordered. “Stretch his arm out."

"Are you crazy?" Ujarak gasped.

"What other choice do we have?"

Ujarak looked up at Francis. Francis's heart ached for the pain he saw on his friend's face. Ujarak hesitated, and Francis saw his eyes stray to his right sleeve, where the cuff was sewn closed to protect the still-tender skin of the stump of this wrist. Then, coming to a decision, Ujarak gripped his son by the shoulders and lay him on his back on the ground. He grasped Taktuq's upper arm and pulled his arm away from his body. 

“Hold him,” Ujarak told Siku as he reached for the knife in his boot. He made quick work of cutting away Taktuq’s coat sleeve. Sivuugun handed a Ujarak a leather thong. With shaking hands, he wound it tight around his son’s arm just above the elbow. 

"Aim for the elbow. Be quick."

The black stuff had coated half of Taktuq's forearm by this point and the smell was overwhelming. Francis heard Sivuugun gag from behind him. He tried to breathe through his mouth to lessen the stench and caught a mouthful of rot. Francis put the blade over Taktuq's inner elbow and took a deep breath to steady the trembling in his hand. Blanky at least had had the fortification of whiskey to dull the pain, if only slightly. How had Dr. MacDonald kept his nerve when sawing off Blanky's leg? How, for that matter, had Silna done what needed to be done?

"Aglooka--"

Francis raised the ax high and brought it down with as much savagery as he could muster. One hack, two--the third blow severed the final tendons and the arm was left twitching on the snow.

Taktuq had gone quiet. Ujarak scooped up his son and hurried over to the sledge, where Sivuugun had already prepared a space to bundle him onto and take him back to the camp.

"Travel quickly,” Siku said. “We'll follow."

Francis and Siku stood quietly for a moment watching Ujarak and Sivuugun lope across the snow, pulling the sledge along behind them. Francis looked down at Taktuq's abandoned limb. The space where his right hand should have been ached with ghostly sympathy.

"Look," breathed Siku.

The mysterious substance oozed over and around the digits on the hand and up and over the wrist--questing, searching? For what? The liquid began to seep into the snow around the arm. Francis could see a faint, grey shadow appear just beneath the surface of the snow, like a bruise blossoming under skin.

"Have you--" Francis paused, unsure of how to ask the question, to put into words what they had just witnessed. "Have you ever seen anything of this nature before?"

Siku simply shook his head, rendered mute in the face of these impossibilities.

Francis realized that he was shaking. The ax he had let slip from his fingers lay buried head-first in the snow. _I'll have to clean that_ , he thought. Is it contaminated in some way? Perhaps it should be destroyed.

The arm would have to be burned. As would the caribou carcass--

With that thought he turned toward the animal, and realized with shock that it was still alive. Its side heaved with painful, labored breaths. Francis trudged over to the creature. The darkness had seeped out of its wounds to stain the snow around it. Its fur was matted with the foulness and Francis could see dark bubbles foaming in the back of its throat as it opened its mouth wide to draw breath. Francis had grown up around farm animals and had no patience for sentimentalizing their lives or attributing human motivation to animal instinct, but the buck's dark eyes, when they found Francis's, seemed to plead with him for something--for an end, perhaps.

Siku arrived beside Francis. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, the quiet broken only by the caribou's struggling wheezes. Then Siku drew his bow and put an arrow through the caribou's eye.

Siku headed over to the does to begin butchering the carcasses to load onto their remaining sledge. Francis wondered if he could just lay himself down by the still-warm body of the caribou and never get up.

* * *

Francis joined Siku in butchering the does, of course. He had also stood impatiently by the sledge laden with meat while Siku carefully extracted the stomachs from the does’ bellies and lay them on the ground where they had been slain. He gathered some nearby stones and placed them around and on top of the stomachs until they were entirely covered--miniature cairns on the tundra. Francis tried to busy himself with making sure the sledge was ready in order to keep himself from snapping at Siku to shift himself. He was in agonies wondering what had become of Taktuq. 

Siku finally, _finally_ joined Francis by the sledge, and they began the long walk back to camp together. 

“We must always give thanks to the caribou for allowing us the use of their meat and bones and skin.”

Francis looked blankly at Siku after this pronouncement. 

Siku tilted his head back toward the little cairns receding in the distance. “After the hunt, we honor the caribou for giving their lives so that we might live. If we do not, we may be punished for our ingratitude with poor hunting and empty stomachs.” 

“Oh.” Francis supposed he had not hid his impatience as well as he thought. 

He and Siku continued to haul their burden into the gathering gloom in silence. _Much good your gratitude did you today,_ Francis thought. He was surprised by his own bitterness.

* * *

By the time they arrived back in camp with the sledge, news of what had happened on the hunt had spread among the Netsilik. Amaruq had called a meeting of the heads of all the families that evening, once the initial panic had died down to a humming tension within the camp. Although of an age of many of the family heads, Francis had no family of his own, existing as he did on the periphery of Ujarak's, and so would normally not be invited to such meetings. As an eyewitness, however, he was now the center of attention, along with Sivuugun and Siku. Ujarak would not leave his son's bedside. The boy was doing as well as could be expected, although the risk of infection was an ever-present fear. 

Francis looked down at the stump at the end of his right arm. There were still days when he looked down with surprise or dismay at what seemed to be a foreign appendage.

Amaruq looked around the assembled men. Francis was reminded of many an officer's meeting, first in wardrooms, officers bedecked in gold braid and sipping tea out of china cups, then in canvas tents, the braid stripped away and the china lost as they conferred in urgent tones on the fates of the men outside. Desperation had made some of those officers consider courses of action that would have appalled their past selves, acts that Francis had refused to countenance, before he was stolen away and unable to...

Surely it wasn't as desperate as that, yet.

"You all know of course why I have gathered you here today,” Amaruq began. “We should have already encountered caribou on previous hunting parties throughout the summer, but today marks the first day we have managed to find them. And we have now heard from our friends of a new danger--a sickness that poisons the blood of animals and destroys all it touches.”

“It is not only the animals that are sick,” an old man named Tukkuttok spoke up. “My granddaughters went berry picking yesterday and found nothing good to eat. They brought some of the berries back to show me--full of a foulness I’ve never seen before, rotted before they had even ripened. My youngest got sick eating one of them.” 

Others chimed in with their own stories. The lichens that smelled noxious and felt greasy to the touch. The flowers, that in summers past brought the tundra to life in a shock of yellows and purples, withering before they bloomed, poisoned by some invisible worm. A fox, whose unnervingly aggressive behavior scared some children into running home to their mothers. Hares whose meat brought sickness to those who tasted it.

Amaruq raised his hand to still the growing clamor. “It is clear that a strange malady sickens the land. Whatever it is, we must address the problem before we lose more of the year. Does anyone here wish to suggest a course of action?” 

What followed was an even more animated discussion than the previous one. Francis’s Inuktitut had steadily improved during the past year, but he kept losing track of the conversation. He was able to piece together that some men were in favor of moving their camp further south, while others were unconvinced that this would change their fortunes much. Many seemed in favor of appealing to--to someone, a god, perhaps? It sounded like “Tekesirtok.” Someone pointed out that they had weathered difficult years before, and they would weather this one, too. 

“No.” A man whose name Francis did not know shook his head. “This year is different. Everything has been different since we lost Tuunbaq.” 

Tuunbaq. The man who named the creature did not look directly at Francis, but Francis felt eyes on him all the same. He tried not to let his discomfort show. 

The other men grew quiet as they all sat with this unavoidable fact. Amaruq let them sit in pensive silence for a few moments before he spoke. 

“In my opinion moving southward is best. Those of you who wish to stay are free to do so, but I encourage everyone to remain with the camp until later in the berry-picking season. Before we break camp we will make an appeal to Tekkeitsertok to provide us with healthy caribou. If these measures fail, then we will reconsider things.” 

With that pronouncement the meeting came to an end, and the men began to disperse back to their tents to tell their families the news.

Although Francis was anxious to see Ujarak and Taktuq, he held back. After most of the men had left, he steadied his nerve and approached Amaruq, who sat patiently as if waiting for him.

“Do you think this is my fault?” 

Amaruq let out a sigh that sounded almost like a laugh. “Your fault? No. You played a part in this, of course, but the rhythms of this world can never be controlled by the actions of one man. To assume that you and you alone bear responsibility for what is happening is simply arrogance, Aglooka. We will face what comes next as a community.” 

Francis pressed his lips together and gave a curt nod. Amaruq’s gaze turned sympathetic. 

“Go see Ujarak and Taktuq. Get some rest. We will sing to Tekkeitsertok tomorrow, and there are many preparations to make before then.”

Francis wished Amaruq good night and headed toward Ujarak’s tent. For all his previous impatience to see his friend, his feet now dragged like lead weights and he approached the tent with a sense of dread. Francis brushed the tent flap aside and peered within. Ujarak and his wife Kallik sat by Taktuq’s bedside, where the boy was sleeping fitfully. Sweat dotted his brow and upper lip and his face was creased with pain. Ujarak gave Francis a wan smile as Kallik dipped a cloth in snowmelt to bathe her son’s brow. 

Francis hesitated by the opening of the tent, torn between his desire to extend comfort to the people who had shared their food and taught him what little skills he possessed, and his reluctance to intrude on such a private moment. 

He couldn’t go in. Francis turned away from the scene before him and walked back to his tent. Settling beneath his fur he closed his eyes and prayed that the exhaustion in his bones meant that sleep would come soon. 

Of course it didn’t. His mind raced with fears for Taktuq and grief for Ujarak and Kallik. And every time he closed his eyes, the wide, desperate eyes of the caribou looked back at him. Decaying before its death, exhausted spirit trapped in a body clinging to life. Francis was glad Siku had put the poor creature out of its misery. He didn’t think he had the strength to do that again. 

_I can’t do this again._ Francis jerked upright. He couldn’t watch helplessly as the people around him starved and sickened and died. Amaruq might insist that this was not his burden to bear alone, but who else was alive to bear it? Francis would not be mollified by pretty reassurances. 

The sky was beginning to lighten, revealing soft charcoal smudges that eventually sharpened into the shapes of the Netsilik tents. As color began to seep back into the world, Francis packed some necessities into a knapsack, took up his spear, and left the camp in search of Silna.


	2. The Spirit

* * *

Swaddled in canvas, sheltered by stone. The press of the rocks above, below. The press of rocks molding its form into the rocky earth below, below, low. Low, secured, weighted like an anchor securing the boat to the shoreline. Don't drift away.

It had drifted for some time. Drifted through a haze of pain, drifted as sinews unspooled and tissue disintegrated, the one tether it had to this earth unfurling. Drifted like the moans that drifted from the mouth to float at the canvas barrier of the tent. Floated above the cot and the man in the cot and the man beside the cot clasping his hand.

Now all was still and quiet, save for the moaning of the wind outside. 

The rocks pressed down suddenly and shifted, the weight redistributing before sliding off. Light, terrible and white, pierced its cocoon, sought it out, found it. 

_Please let me be._

It sighed as grasping hands unearthed it, dragged it out across the shale. It groaned as they tore away clothes, exposing it to the vast sky and biting wind. It shrieked as blades pierced flesh, severing tendons and carving away hunks of lean meat for hungry mouths. Hollowing out the body until even this last refuge was lost to it. 

The spirit drifted, now homeless, over the vast grey expanse of an unfamiliar place. Somewhere nearby blunt teeth were tearing and grinding the flesh of some unfortunate creature. It felt like the distant ache of a phantom limb. 

_You don’t belong here._

But where could it go? The sky stretched out above and the ground stretched out below and it was pinned between the two, squeezed between the two like wet cloth in a press, with the unforgiving sun paralyzing it with its unrelenting gaze.

It had to hide. It sank down, down, below the shale and the frost into the sandy earth, where it settled into the underground network of the lichens that grew among the rocks and brought color to the grey landscape. But the lichens knew it didn’t belong there and resisted its occupation, driving it from rhizine to rhizine until it found temporary respite in the roots of a bush and was taken up into the branches and leaves. Here it thought it had found sanctuary until the plant’s cells began to sicken and die around it. It fled the rotting structure into the body of a hare who was nibbling at the berries, but this, too, brought only temporary relief. The creature’s natural defenses tried to expel it and the spirit fought back while the hare’s body sickened and grew weak.

All the while the spirit’s grief turned to panic which turned to rage, and when the hare at last died, it found a malicious joy in the rotting of its body, and fed on it within the fungi and the maggots that settled there. 

The spirit spread corruption with single-minded, feverish intensity, inflicting the pain it felt on the living things it encountered as it roamed through this world. Sometimes it would encounter other beings like it, and a spark of familiarity, almost recognition, would cause it to pause, and the glimmer of the person it once was almost broke through. But the moment always passed, and the spirit moved on. 

That person no longer existed. Did it ever?

* * *

When Silna had spotted the distant figure on the horizon, too far to make out any of its features, she had known without knowing how she knew that it was Aglooka. She had been settled outside her tent restringing her bow when she had first seen him, and occupied herself with her work and her thoughts as he came closer. 

She hadn’t seen Aglooka since she had left him with Amaruq, after guiding him on his journey to visit the rest of his dead and dying men. Her younger self, the girl she had been before her father died and left her with the responsibility of Tuunbaq, might have felt some satisfaction at the grim fate of these men--the men who were responsible for the deaths of her father and of Koveyook and his family--but as she looked at their bodies huddled together in bags, at their belongings scattered to the wind, at their bones poking out of cooking pots, all she felt was an exhausted kind of anger. What had been the purpose of any of this? What had they been seeking, to abandon their home and their people to bring death upon hers? Harry had said it was for their trade, but Silna could never make sense of this. Her people travelled for trade as well, to exchange pelts or oil for wood or other materials that they lacked in the far North, and she had never witnessed such destruction. She wondered if Harry had been better able to communicate these things in her language, it would have made more sense, or if it simply defied explanation. Harry himself seemed to have lost this certainty toward the end. 

Silna breathed deeply around the growing lump in her throat and carefully set aside her memories of Koveyook and Harry and her father. Aglooka had reached her camp. 

Aglooka came to an awkward halt a few feet away from her tent. 

“Hello, Silna.”

It was still a bit of a shock to hear her name come from Aglooka’s mouth. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this level of familiarity from him.

“I have come to ask for your advice. May I join you?” 

Silna nodded to a spot next to her and Aglooka settled down with a word of thanks and a sigh. The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Silna finished restringing the bow and pulled on the string to test its strength. Aglooka watched her. Their journey across the land had allowed them to develop a quiet sort of companionship in which they could simply exist in silence together. Aglooka would tell her what he needed to in time.

And he did, gradually, in fits and starts, describe what he had witnessed on the hunt, what the others in the camp had observed in the plants and animals, what Amaruq had decided. Silna had noticed this strangeness herself. Hunting had become more uncertain than usual lately, and she had learned to be wary when gathering berries and roots. The plants whose names and uses her mother had taught her as a girl had become unfamiliar to her senses. 

“And I cannot help to think that I am to blame for all this.”

Silna stopped her work then to look fully at Aglooka. She raised her eyebrows.

Aglooka continued with determination. “I _know_ I am to blame for this. This all started happening after I killed Tuunbaq. I know now he was important. Some sort of guardian spirit, yes? What else could explain all this?” 

Silna sighed. The thought had occurred to her, of course--it was difficult when finding berries filled with poison or skinning a hare to discover rancid meat not to be reminded of her failures with Tuunbaq, first for failing to connect with him, then for allowing these men to kill him. But Aglooka’s reasoning sounded overly simplistic. As Amaruq had reminded Silna herself, their people had known lean times and witnessed extraordinary occurrences before. Tuunbaq was an important part of the land, but he was not the only thing on which the rhythms of their lives depended. The idea that the way of life they had known for generations could be interrupted by the actions of one man was absurd. And a little insulting. 

Silna touched the roof of her mouth gingerly with the stump of her tongue. It had healed well, but was still sensitive and gave her difficulty speaking. She had to be brief and careful with her speech so that Aglooka might understand her. 

“What is done cannot be undone. Amaruq was right. You need to go back.”

She could see that despite her efforts her garbled speech gave him some trouble. He hesitated before asking, “You are saying you will not do anything?”

“I will perform my duties as shaman here. You will return home.” 

“Home,” Aglooka repeated as though he did not know the meaning of the word. And perhaps he didn’t. While the man Silna had first met would have worked himself into a fury and spat fire at her, the man before her now slumped forward and stared into the distance as though lost. Silna had never thought of Aglooka as an old man, but he looked old to her now. 

“I promised one hundred and twenty men that I would get them home. I failed them. I left their bodies scattered across this land. There is no home for me to return to.” 

Silna thought about the failures she had left behind on the ice. No, there was no home for them to return to. For all that she had counseled Aglooka to let go of the past, she often found herself lingering on it in her solitude. What she might have done differently, how she could have proven herself worthy of the trust her father had placed in her. Silna did not know if she would ever relieve herself of this burden of guilt, but perhaps she could ease it in another. 

She rose and fetched the seal oil lamp from inside her tent and placed it in front of Aglooka, standing across from him on the other side of the lamp. The flame flickered and granted them some light in the gathering dusk, but no real warmth. Aglooka looked up at her with hope dawning on his face. Silna reached over and gently touched his shoulder.

“I will call to Anguta. To ask for safe passage for your men’s spirits to the next world.”

Aglooka looked doubtful, but perhaps sensing that her offer was not open to negotiation, merely nodded. 

Silna took a deep breath and smelled the clean scent of snow in the air. She heard the breeze whisper through the valley, stirring the grasses and shrubs. The same breeze blew over the bones of Aglooka’s men--she cast her mind out there and began to sing.

The last time she had appealed to a spirit had been her disastrous attempt to forge a connection with Tuunbaq. Then, she still had the use of her tongue. Now the words came more haltingly and painfully, but her voice was still strong, and she knew that Anguta would be able to hear her intent.

Aglooka sat guarding the flame while Silna paced around the camp, throwing her voice out beyond the circle of light into the darkness. When she was a girl, she would sit just as Aglooka was sitting now, tending the flame and watching her father call out into the night. She shadowed his steps and echoed his words, and hardly noticed the world growing darker around her. 

Just as Silna’s voice was beginning to crack a cry from Aglooka broke her out of her trance. 

“Oh!” The flame had gone out. Silna walked over to where Aglooka had lifted the lamp to inspect it. There was still plenty of oil left, and the moss wick was still there. The smoke curled into the frigid air and dissipated in the breeze like a last, quiet sigh.

Aglooka’s shoulders were shaking. Silna looked down to see the glitter of tears on his cheeks as he cried silently. 

“Come.” Silna coaxed Aglooka to his feet and they made their way into her tent. After they had settled into their furs, after Aglooka’s tears had given way to the quiet balm of sleep, Silna lay awake for a long time, the steady intonation of her father’s voice echoing in her ears. 

* * *

The voice found it as it whirled in the eddies of a stream and hooked it like a fish on the line. It froze, quivering, pierced through by the voice crying out in the wilderness of its existence. 

The voice gentled its rage and beckoned it forth, and after an eternity of aimless wandering, the spirit had a destination to seek.

* * *

When Francis awoke the next morning, he lay staring up at the roof of the tent for a few quiet moments before heaving himself up to face the day. He felt wretched and angry with himself. He was a fool for thinking that begging at Silna's door would do any good for Ujarak and his family or the rest of the Netsilik. What was done couldn't be undone--this place was a god-forsaken wasteland and Francis had gone and destroyed the guardian that had preserved them from its ravages.

The thunder must have shown on his face as he exited the tent into the bright sunlight, for Silna looked over and raised her eyebrows at him before returning back to her work. She was using a smooth stone to sharpen the edge of a crescent-shaped blade--an ulu. Kallik had one similar to this, as did all of the Netsilik women Francis had met. 

Francis took a deep breath and relaxed the tension in his face. He was hardly being a gracious guest to Silna, especially considering everything she had done for him last night.

He picked up his knapsack and drew nearer to her. She flicked her eyes to a spot beside her on the ground, and Francis lowered himself down with a grunt.

"Silna, I want to apologize for--" 

Francis didn't know the Inuktitut word for "barge in on" and Silna turned to face him while he struggled with the words. 

"--for visiting you so unexpectedly last night. I want to thank you for the welcome and the kindness you have shown me...for the kindness you have always shown me."

Silna dipped her head. She didn't smile at Francis, exactly, but he noticed a softening around her lips that he hoped meant she accepted his apology. Francis hesitated. What he had said, what he was able to say with his still-limited vocabulary, was not up to the task of expressing his gratitude toward this woman, who had done so much for him when she did not have to--indeed, when she had every reason not to.

But what words, in English or in Inuktitut, could adequately measure the depth of his debt to her?

Francis opened up his knapsack and rummaged around inside until he found the dried caribou meat that he had brought.

"I know it is not much, but would you accept it as a small sign of my thanks? For the work you did last night."

Silna stopped tending to her ulu to look at the proffered meat. For a moment Francis was afraid she would refuse, but she took it and put it into a pouch tied to her belt. Then, separating one strip of meat from the rest, she tore it in half and offered a piece to Francis. Francis took it, and they sat together, chewing the tough flesh and looking out over the plain before them.

Francis rubbed at his eyes. The landscape before him had taken on a soft haze, almost like a halo of light was outlining everything.

* * *

Francis's boots whispered across the tundra. The sun, invisible behind the cloud cover, had already reached its low zenith by the time he left Silna's camp and was now sinking toward the horizon, brightening the western sky with its pale, diffused light, like candlelight passing through fine china. The air was cold enough that the frost that had descended in the night hadn't entirely melted, and glints of ice caught the light amongst the brown of the scrubby grass.

Although--was that ice? Francis stopped and rubbed his eyes. The haze that had bothered him before leaving Silna hadn't disappeared, but refocused. The shimmering in the grass seemed to move subtly, to shift and arrange itself until Francis stood in the center of what looked like a miniature labyrinth. It looked, the thought struck him suddenly, like iron filings on paper, shifting to reveal the invisible contours of a magnetic field.

What was this? An unrecorded natural phenomenon of the Arctic environment? He had never encountered anything of the like in his previous excursions to either Pole. The closest natural occurrence that he could think of would be the shifting lights of the Aurora--magnetic fluctuations recorded during sightings of the northern lights suggested that these were certain types of magnetic storms. May not there be similar terrestrial occurrences yet unseen by European eyes?

 _Or maybe you've just gone barmy_ , said that voice in Francis's head that sounded a lot like Blanky. Francis carefully lowered himself into a crouch and uncapped his waterskin, closing his eyes and taking a deep swallow.

 _With the lack of any additional evidence, both hypotheses are equally likely_ , Francis thought wryly. When he looked up again, the shimmering paths were gone.

* * *

To Francis's increasing dismay, the ghostly lines on the ground continued to fade in and out of sight. Whenever the time stretched on since the last sighting, he would begin to think he had seen the last of it, only for it to slowly reappear like some sort of trompe l'oeil. While this alone was not necessarily damning evidence in the case against his sanity, his silent walking companion was.

As the dusk began to fall and Francis continued his trek across the plain, he slowly became aware of another presence by his side. It first appeared as a shadow at the corner of his right eye, a darkness where his peripheral vision simply fell away. Francis snapped his head around, but the shadow evaded him. All Francis could see was the plain, its scrubby vegetation and clear pools of icy water reflecting the pale sky above. Francis fixed his eyes on the horizon and continued walking. The shadow encroached on his periphery once more. Francis ignored it and trained his eyes on the landscape before him. The shadow didn't fade or drop away; rather, it seemed to gain in mass or presence, as though a body were pressed up close behind, a torso curving close behind Francis's shoulder, a head moving closer to press a mouth just against his right ear--

Francis whirled around, panting hard, and was met with only empty air. He could have sworn that the ghost of a breath had stirred the hair just behind his ear.

 _Steady on, old man_ , he thought. _You are letting the loneliness of this place get the better of you._

You're letting your loneliness get the better of you.

Francis walked forward a few yards, his shadowy companion returning once again. Was it his imagination, or could he now hear the whisper of another's footsteps rustling through the grass? When he paused, it paused, too, of course.

It might be an echo. Francis's mind dutifully supplied the logical explanation even while the hairs rising on the back of his neck told him otherwise.

Francis lengthened his strides. His companion matched his pace. He stopped abruptly, wondering with a sort of hysteria if he might trick his shadow into crashing into him from behind, but of course, when he turned around, he was met only with the wind rushing over the empty landscape.

"What do you want with me!?” Francis burst out with a sudden rage that caught him off guard. 

“I've had my fill of spirits and monsters and bleedin’, thrice-damned bodachs to last me the rest of my goddamn life so you show yourself, or you bugger off to where you've come from, you hear me?" 

Francis's shouts seemed swallowed up by the tundra--not even an echo in reply.

After a few deep breaths to slow his pounding heart, Francis turned and continued on his way. After a few feet, his silent companion fell into step behind him.

* * *

Francis was not sure how long he had been travelling when he first noticed the figure on the horizon, but it brought him a great sense of relief. The solitude of this place had clearly been playing queer tricks on his mind, and the presence of another person in this place, however brief their encounter may be, was a welcome one. Perhaps the Esquimau would be able to shed some light on the strange things he had experienced--a local's understanding of the peculiarities of his native land might render the once-eerie knowable and safe.

As Francis and the figure drew closer, two details emerged: the approaching figure was male, and he was not an Esquimau. While he was still too far for Francis to make out his face with any clarity, his dark clothes suggested the woolen uniform of the Royal Navy, rather than the sealskin and fur clothing of a native man. Francis's footsteps picked up without conscious thought, his heart pounding not with fear, but with shock and stirring hope. Could this possibly be one of his lost men? Could God have seen fit to spare one other, and if one other, perhaps more? Francis had tried to keep an accurate tally of the dead as he and Silna picked their way across the snow from abandoned camp to abandoned camp, but might he have miscounted?

Francis was almost running now--he had abandoned his knapsack and was hurrying as much as his exhausted legs would carry him.

"Hello!" he called. He was met with no response.

Francis's steps slowed as he came closer to the shadowy figure. A few yards away, he stopped and watched him approach. The man--although with a leaden feeling in his gut Francis began to doubt that designation more and more--was indeed wearing the dark woolen uniform of a sailor. The brim of his cap was pulled down so low over his forehead that it cast his face in shadow. Francis could not make out any of his features between the brim of his hat to the up-turned color of his coat. His steady, shuffling gait was taking him nearer and nearer to Francis, and Francis finally found his voice again.

"Who goes there?" he called in a firm, clear voice. The figure didn't respond, and in fact betrayed no sign that he had heard Francis at all, his gait never once slowing or stopping. He was only a yard away now.

"This is Captain Crozier of _Terror_ addressing you--identify yourself, sailor," Francis said, masking his growing apprehension with a firm tone of authority, although alone as he was on the deserted plain, it probably sounded more like peevishness.

The man was abreast of Francis now, and now was passing him on the left, cap tilted toward the ground, slow footsteps unwavering, and Francis in desperation grabbed ahold of his shoulder and gripped it tight.

He had intended to shake the man, to yell in his ear, anything to break the stupor he was under--but Francis's hand, instead of gripping the rough wool of a sailor’s overcoat, sank through his coat--through his flesh!--as though he had plunged his hand into a molded jelly, to circle around something hard underneath.

Francis could still see his hand, buried almost up to the wrist in the shadowy translucence of the man's shoulder, gripping what could only be the man's arm bone.

Francis screamed and tried to yank his hand back, but it was clamped around the bone like a vise and would not release. He turned his face toward the man--the man who was finally looking at him, looking at him with eyes as wide and black as ice holes at night and a mouth that gaped wide, wider, wider, and released an unearthly howl from its depths with a gust of putrid breath into Francis's face.

Francis gagged and tried to twist away, but the creature hauled him in close. Francis could feel his arm sinking into the thing still further. The "thing" because while it had resembled a man only seconds previously, it was rapidly losing shape, shifting and melting until only those terrible eyes and gaping mouth remained to identify what was once a face. Francis remembered the caribou bleeding black tar into the snow, and opened his mouth to scream again--

A coolness washed over him then, and with it came a sudden calm. Francis's body straightened up, and his arm, that had just been sinking into the tar-like substance of what had once been a man, disentangled itself and tucked itself behind his back.

Francis heard his voice say, "Stand down, Hartnell." 

Or at least, it sounded like his voice. His lips moved and his tongue shaped the words, but the way his mouth formed the vowels felt awkward and unfamiliar. Instead of rounded syllables of his Ulster tongue, he heard the clipped, precise intonation of an English gentleman.

The creature responded to the command with alacrity, dropping the appendages that had continued to reach for Francis to its sides and standing at attention. Francis realized that he could see the shape of a man through the gelatinous mass before him, as though the two images were overlaid on top of each other--could even make out the features of Thomas Hartnell’s face, his blue eyes and his sandy beard, through the empty eye sockets and gaping maw of the creature. He would have rubbed his eyes to ease the headache building behind them, but whatever was currently operating his mouth did not see fit to allow him the use of his extremities.

"You are dismissed, Mr. Hartnell," Francis's voice said, and with that, the Hartnell-creature slowly sank downward, losing shape and mass until he poured like sewage onto the grass and slate below their feet. The fluid seeped into the rocky soil and for a moment, Francis could see glowing tendrils spreading out like veins beneath the surface of the soil, dispersing its poison in all directions.

Francis inhaled deeply and with that breath realized that he once again had control over his body. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that his shadow had returned, if it had ever left. In all the chaos he had rather lost track of it.

"I suppose..." he said slowly, feeling the way his tongue shaped words that were properly his own, "that I should thank you for interceding on my behalf, there. Though I would ask you not make a habit of operating my body like a puppet."

The silence that followed his words felt anticipatory, as though his rescuer were considering their words before replying. Francis waited with growing apprehension.

_Francis._

The voice, when it came, was no louder than a sigh, a stirring of wind through the dry tundra grass. Francis couldn't be sure whether he heard it with his ears or with his mind, but he knew that voice as well as he knew his own, just as he had known that he would never hear that dear voice ever again while he lived. 

_Francis, where are we?_

* * *

"James--James--" Francis could barely speak around the lump in his throat. His vision blurred with tears that sluiced down his cheeks and stung his face with the cold.

"My God, James. You're with me, you're--we're still in the Arctic, in Nunavut. James, can you see me?"

 _I see you, Francis._ James sounded certain, but dazed. _It is dark here, but I can see you._

To Francis's immense frustration, he could not face James head-on, no matter how hard he tried. Turning his head this way and that did nothing to change the position of the ever-present shadow from the corner of his right eye. Francis found that by holding himself still and letting his eyes become unfocussed, he could just about perceive some of James's features in those dark depths. The long nose, the sharp jaw, even the glint of an eye could sometimes be spotted. He had almost snapped at James to hold still, but James had sounded so lost that Francis was sure he didn't know he was evading him.

"James, what do you remember? Do you know what happened?"

The answer was so slow to come that Francis began to worry that he had lost James again. When finally--

 _I remember...wandering. I was asleep, I think, and then...and then something woke me, and--_ James cut off with a gasp. 

Francis reached out despite knowing the uselessness of such a gesture. 

“You’re all right, James.” 

James was quiet for a few moments. Francis imagined him gathering himself. 

_And then I was lost, for a time. I think I was looking for something, but I couldn't find it. And I...forgot myself. I could not remember who I was or what I was looking for, and I felt...such despair, Francis. I felt hopeless in a way I never have. Not even before, when--_

James broke off again. Francis ached with the need to reach out to James, to offer him some measure of comfort, but as always, when he turned his head, James drifted just out of reach.

At last James continued, halting and uncertain.

_I do not know how long I wandered like that. I think I might have wandered the earth forever were it not for the voice that suddenly called out to me. A human voice--a woman's voice. I still did not know who I was but that voice gave me a direction to follow. And when I finally found what I was looking for, it was you. I think I knew you before I knew myself._

Francis sent a watery smile in James's direction.

"I'm so glad you found me, James. I'm so grateful you're here with me now."

Francis couldn't make out James's expression, but he felt a glow of feeble warmth from behind that he hoped meant James felt similarly. Then the warmth dimmed.

_Francis...I am dead, aren't I? This is death._

Francis inhaled deeply.

"I don’t know what death is. I don't know if this is all there is. It could be that we are standing on the outer frontier, and a vast country lies just beyond our perception. But...but yes, James. You died."

The presence that was James seemed to contemplate this. Francis wiped his tears with his gloved hand and drew a shaky breath.

"Do you remember much, James?"

_I remember that you were with me, at the end. I remember you eased my way._

Francis sat on the ground and put his face in his hand, his shoulders shaking with the sobs that he could no longer keep at bay. Eased his way! Some ease. Some mercy he had shown James. Dooming him to wander the earth forever, like Cain. This couldn't be all there was for him. This couldn't be all there was for his men.

The shadow drew nearer, and Francis could almost fancy he felt it pressed up against his back, radiating warmth and comfort through his sealskin coat. It made him think of the way Neptune would sometimes lean his warm, dark body against his side. Francis huffed a laugh through his tears. James probably wouldn't appreciate the comparison.

James made a questioning noise. In response, Francis drew himself up, wiped his face, and said, "I think we should go speak to Silna--to Lady Silence."


	3. The Veil

* * *

Silna spied Aglooka striding back toward her camp just before sunset and sighed. She should have packed up camp and left while she still had the chance, but something had kept her here. She supposed this was that something.

Silna had known that following in her father's footsteps would mean a lifetime of trial, but this man was a trial in himself.

Silna busied herself with building a fire as Aglooka came closer, his uneven steps belying his exhaustion. The kindling had just caught and Silna was coaxing the flames higher when he finally reached the camp. Silna looked up and startled when she saw that Aglooka was not alone--how had she not noticed his companion earlier? And then she took a closer look.

 _Oh_.

Firewood forgotten in suddenly nerveless hands, Silna stared as Aglooka straightened up and caught his breath.

"Silna, ah, hello. Forgive me for disrupting your peace yet again, but I need your advice." 

He certainly would. Silna stared at Aglooka's silent companion. She didn't know his name, but she remembered his face. He had been there that terrible night her father died. He and Aglooka had fought the night Tuunbaq attacked the boat, and he had been in the camps during their long walk south. Silna didn't know what had become of him, although it wouldn't be difficult to guess.

And now his spirit was staring at her from over Aglooka's shoulder across the campfire. It seemed as though Anguta had heard her appeal. Silna knew that she would never be the shaman her father had been. Her failure to connect with Tuunbaq only affirmed a fear she had always held deep down. The gods were deaf to her. Or so she had thought, until now.

Aglooka had been saying something, although in Silna's shock, she had not heard a word of it. He noticed her stare, and something in his face changed--the urgency that had been there before became sharper, turned to yearning, to grief mingled with hope.

"Do you see him? Please tell me you see him."

Silna opened her mouth and hesitated, her tongue moving in an abortive effort to give voice to the emotion that had suddenly seized her, before she simply closed her mouth and inclined her head yes.

Aglooka let out a sound between a laugh and a sigh.

"Oh, I am relieved to hear you say that. I was half convinced that I had gone completely mad."

Aglooka cocked his head to the right, where the spirit stood, and peered at it out the corner of his eye, like a fox eyeing a fisherman's catch of trout.

"What does he--ah, how does he look?"

Aglooka then murmured something in his own tongue to the spirit, who turned its attention toward Aglooka. This allowed Silna time to look at the two of them properly. Silna could understand now why she hadn't noticed the spirit at first--her eye seemed to skip over it, the muted greys and browns of the figure merging with the slate and dry grass around it, the way a hare's white fur allows it to hide in plain view on the snow-covered tundra. While its extremities were blurry and indistinct, the face was all angles. Silna thought she could see the outline of the skull under flesh pulled taught against bone by starvation and sickness. _Lean and hungry_ , she thought. His eyes were dark and reflected the light that seemed to pass through the rest of his form. His feet were bare.

This is one to be both pitied and feared.

Silna responded to Aglooka's question with her own. "He is your friend?"

"Yes--do you recognize him? James."

"Jame." Sibilance was still difficult for her.

The spirit--James--inclined his head and said something that sounded like rustling grass. When he looked up, Silna realized that she couldn't see the whites of his eyes. They were dark and reflective, like a still lake under a dark sky. She suppressed a shudder. Friend of Aglooka though he was, she still knew to be wary of a restless spirit.

Although wariness was still no excuse to be inhospitable. She gestured to a spot across the fire and Aglooka sat down, James shadowing his movements.

"Silna." Aglooka placed his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. The firelight deepened the lines around his eyes and made his intense gaze owlish. "What you did last night--I think your petition has been answered."

Silna had thought the same thing, of course, but she still considered her next words with care.

"What makes you think so?"

If Aglooka was surprised by her question, he didn't show it. "Last night we spoke of the poison that sickens this land, and you asked Anguta to help my men find their rest. I had an encounter that suggests that this poison is...well, I think it originates with my men. With their spirits. They still haunt this place."

Aglooka told Silna about the spirit he had met on his way back to the camp. How the rotting smell and sickly ooze that seeped from it had been the same as that emanating from the afflicted caribou. How the spirit had sunk into the ground to contaminate the soil below.

"And James was the one that saved me. It responded to him--he was able to make it listen. I do not claim to understand how, but I think he might be able to help us fix this."

Silna considered this. She wanted to find hope in Aglooka's story, but there was one major flaw in his reasoning.

"You cannot cure a poisoned body with poison."

Aglooka's head jerked back as if struck. "What?"

"You say your men are the ones poisoning the land. I say you are probably right." 

Silna paused to rest her tongue before continuing.

"But you want to counter your men's influence with the help of another one of your men? This is like administering poison to one already sick. It can only hasten death."

Aglooka stiffened, and Silna saw rage in the clench of his jaw and the flare of his nostrils. She expected him to lash out at her, but instead, he lowered his head and breathed in deeply. Silna saw how he deliberately tried to relax this body. James, silently sitting on Aglooka's right and watching their exchange with uncomprehending eyes, turned toward his friend and placed his hand gently on his shoulder. Silna didn't know if Aglooka could feel it, but he nevertheless settled.

When he looked back up at Silna, the rage was gone, and in its place was sorrow and exhaustion.

"You may be right. I don't know what the right thing to do is. That's why we came to you, Silna. We need your guidance. But James came to me after you called on Anguta--surely that means something?"

Not so long ago, Silna had found herself in Aglooka's position--looking across the fire at someone she hoped would give her the guidance she so desperately needed. Amaruq's words had been both reassurance and burden, a reminder of the responsibility she had assumed when she had taken the blade to the root of her tongue.

_You cannot walk away._

More than anything else, it was this memory and the plea she saw in Aglooka's eyes that made her nod her head.

"All right. I will help." 

* * *

As Silna and Francis readied themselves for sleep in Silna's tent, Francis explained what they had discussed to James. Francis's facility with the Netsilik tongue had increased since James had last heard him speak it, his words more confident and less halting, and James had found himself adrift during their conversation, gleaning as much information as he could from their tones of voice and facial expressions. Francis had translated some--but, James suspected, not all--of their discussion while they were having it, but was now trying to give him a fuller understanding of the decision they had finally reached.

"Silna thinks it would be unwise to call upon Anguta again after he has already given us aid," Francis explained as he rolled out a fur onto the packed ground. Silna was making similar preparations beside him in the close quarters of the tent.

"It feels so strange to say that. If my mother could see me now resort to such idolatry--if _Sir John_ could see!" 

Francis shook his head with a small laugh, and Silna looked up at them, dark eyes glinting in the light of the small lamp set between them.

If James had any breath left, it would have caught then. For someone to see him, for their eyes to register his presence and to track his movements, after an eternity stalking invisibly through the landscape, was both exhilarating and oddly frightening. He had never shied away from an audience in life, but he now found himself inexplicably ashamed under her gaze, as though he were naked.

James looked away and shifted closer to Francis.

_Well, if my presence here is truly due to the fellow's influence, I suppose we must concede that he is a damn sight more effective than a golden calf._

Francis hummed in amused agreement. "I suppose you're right, James."

James basked in the warmth of the easy companionship they had shared too briefly in life. How he had missed this man. How he had missed him without even knowing what it was that he missed--and wasn't that the greatest sin of all, on James's long list of sins? That he had forgotten Francis, and without Francis, had forgotten himself.

 _And you might forget him again._ The thought pierced his brain with a sudden chill, but Francis was speaking again, saving him from pursuing that darkness too far down.

"Because we're not yet certain what we need to do, Silna suggested that returning to the place where the infected caribou died might help us think of next steps. Inspire us, so to speak."

James knew that he was the one Francis and Silna were hoping would be inspired. Silna, through Francis, had asked James why he had returned, and James could only repeat the story he had told Francis earlier. His continued presence here (his continued presence, at all) was just as much a mystery to him as to them. 

Francis and Silna settled into their furs and murmured their goodnights, and Silna blew out the lamp.

James sat in the darkness and listened to the rustlings of Francis and Silna making themselves comfortable. He wasn't sure he could sleep, but the quiet sounds in the dark were soothing.

"James?" Francis suddenly hissed, snapping James out of his reverie.

_Yes, Francis?_

Francis relaxed. "I couldn't see you. I worried...James, if I fall asleep, what will--will you still be here when I wake?"

James looked at Francis, and realized with a start that he was looking at Francis--that he could see him, and Silna beyond him, as though they were lit from within by pale light, like moonlight emanated from their bodies. The light cast into relief the furrows on Francis's forehead and the tense lines around his eyes, that were gazing with concern a half a foot to the right of James. James reached out and did what he had never had the courage to do in life, and soothed the worry lines on that dear face. His fingertips didn't make contact--or rather, he didn't feel the texture of Francis's skin beneath his fingers, but he felt first a pleasant warmth, and beyond that, the prickling of Francis's anxiety.

Let me take these cares from you. Let me share the burden you insist on shouldering alone.

 _I am not leaving, Francis,_ James said with more conviction that he actually felt. _I'll be here when you wake up. Rest now._

And whether it was James's words or his unfelt touch, the prickling of Francis's anxious thoughts softened and eased away, his breaths became deeper, and he dropped into sleep.

James settled closer to Francis's light and kept watch.

* * *

Francis jerked awake in the darkness and lay there with his heart pounding, wondering what it was that had woken him. Then the memory of the previous day came back to him, and he bolted upright. 

"James?"

In the dark of the tent, he could not see James's shadow. He strained his ears for the whisper of James's voice, but all he could hear was Silna's quiet breathing. 

"James." 

Nothing. Francis swore softly to himself and struggled out from underneath his fur, the little claws of despair beginning to pierce his heart. Of course this inexplicable reunion with James was too good to last, the tenuous connection between them snapping as soon as he let his guard down. Even as his heart railed against the injustice of this latest separation, Francis knew that what little extra time he had been granted with James was more than he could ever have hoped for, more than he could ever deserve. But Francis was greedy, and even as he acknowledged the gift he had been given, there was still a quiet part of him that said _not enough time, never enough time_. 

He fumbled his way past the ties on the tent flaps and stepped out under a dark sky split with light. 

The green ribbon of the aurora borealis rippled its way from the eastern horizon, trailing off into hazy curlicues in the west. The light was still faint, but it bathed the grey shale and patchy grass in a soft green light. Francis looked helplessly around at the tundra stretching out in all directions, and opened his mouth to call again when something caught his eye. Francis froze and squinted at the place where he thought he saw--no. Nothing. He shifted his stance--there, again. A glimmer or reflection where there should be no such thing--something suspended in the air near the remains of their campfire.

"James?" Francis asked as he drew closer. He let his gaze relax and looked out into the distance. There, at the corner of his vision, he could see the impression of a shoulder, the hint of lank hair brushing the corner of a sharp jaw. Outlines of these features, sketched in green light. 

One of Amaruq's little nieces, teaching Francis which berries were good to eat and which to avoid, once showed him a bush that had been frozen in an ice storm. Some of its fruit had rotted and slipped out of its icy casings, leaving behind delicate frozen sculptures of the berries. Francis was reminded of this image now as he saw the way in which the aurora's light shaped James's figure--a facade without substance underneath. 

James still hadn't responded to Francis. His image faded in and out of Francis's sight, but he could see that he was turned away from Francis, staring up at the aurora winding its way into the west. Francis was close enough now that he could reach out and touch James, not that he would dare. The gossamer-thinness of his image seemed to forbid physical contact; Francis was afraid his hand would simply pass through and dissipate him like smoke from a snuffed candle. 

_Do you hear that?_

Francis started. He hadn't known James had been aware of his approach.

"Hear what, James?" 

_I can hear them, Francis._

There was something odd about James's voice. He sounded dazed again, like he had when he had first revealed himself to Francis. Francis peered at the glimmer of James's profile and cursed his inability to see his face more clearly. 

"Who?"

James turned to look at Francis, or at least, Francis thought he did. It was more like a displacement of the air than anything Francis could see. 

_Let me show you._

Francis was about to ask James what he meant when the sliver of light that indicated his presence winked out. Before Francis could wonder where James had gone, he felt a weight settling on his limbs and a pressure behind his eyes. Francis gasped as the landscape around him was brilliantly illuminated with the light from the aurora, whose colors washed downward like pigment dripping from a watercolor brush until it seemed almost to touch the ground. The byzantine paths of light that he had first noticed on his solitary journey back to camp reappeared and gained new dimension, as though he could place his boot on one and step onto it.

The visual onslaught was so distracting that at first Francis did not notice the noise. It began as a murmur at the edge of his hearing, then, as it grew louder, like the buzzing of a hive. As it got louder, Francis realized that it was not a singular sound, but a collection of noises--not noises, voices. Francis could just barely make out words in the increasingly loud cacophony in his head. 

Captain...

...mind grows...close... ...leave supplies for the ill...

...must wonder what we're doing here...

...these people...Joyfully... ...victory for the Empire...

...you know what copulates on ships… ...I'm hungry...

...Lady Jane’s Christmas pudding...

… Mark atmospheric pressure...breathe hope… ...one whole country…

...must die on the ice...Disappear...It's a Wednesday...always wanted to be a Marine…

...eyes as a child's...No man is alone on a ship...Terror's problem now...our long winter sojourn...terribly Esquimaux tea merchants coming from Canton a spirit that dresses as an animal Dis-moi ce que tu manges Bugger Victoriahostilecountryamanafraidofchaosdon'tknowwhyIfalterththemindgoesunnatural

The voices quickly lost whatever coherence they had briefly had as they became louder and the pounding in Francis's head grew worse. He tried to bring his hands up to cover his ears, and realized he could not. His arms remained at his sides and his eyes, staring unblinking at the brilliance before him, began to sting and see double. 

Francis desperately tried to turn his focus inward.

_James? James, stop! It's too much! Stop!_

Could James hear him? Francis could barely hear himself over the clamor in his head. 

A chasm opened up inside Francis, a yearning and a grief so desolate he felt it physically as a hole yawning open in his chest, his stomach. Something within him strained toward those voices and that brilliance in the sky even as he recoiled from it. 

He might have remained there the rest of the night, pinned between horror and desire, had not a gloved hand come down roughly on his shoulder and spun him around. 

"Out!" 

Silna grasped Francis’s head firmly and looked into his eyes.

"Spirit! Out!"

And like breaking the surface after too long spent underwater, Francis felt the pressure lift from his bones and took a deep gulp of air. 

Silna moved her hands to Francis's shoulders to steady him as he panted for breath and tried to gather his dazed thoughts. 

_Where did James go?_

"Thank you," he breathed. 

Silna nodded and stepped back. Francis looked around the campsite. The aurora's light had once again dimmed to a subtle glow, but he could no longer see the glimmer that had earlier marked James's presence. 

“James?”

There was no response.

A cold breeze stung Francis's face. It was not until he reached up and felt the dampness on his cheeks that he realized he had been crying.

* * *

Francis had called out to him several times, but James couldn't bring himself to answer. After a few minutes of Francis calling his name and peering into the dark, Silna had led him back into the tent. The tent flaps remained unsecured, leaving the entrance open, an outstretched hand.

 _Oh God, what have I done?_

James looked up at the aurora illuminating the sky above. His men's voices had receded somewhat, once again a murmur as opposed to the building crescendo they had reached when he had been listening with Francis's ears.

_Francis_. The memory of that... _possession_ brought with it a wave of self-loathing so strong that James wished for a wild moment to tear himself apart and scatter his atoms over the windswept plain. Or at the very least to close his eyes against the continuing reminder of his transgression. But just as the oblivion of sleep had turned out to be a blessing belonging solely to the living, the relief of darkness and of silence had been denied him ever since he had been roughly unhoused from his tomb. He was an exposed nerve, a latticework of pain without the protective embrace of a body to shield him.

Was that what had made him so wild? The relief of possessing a physical form was so great he couldn't relinquish it once he had it? His memories of the time before had been slowly returning to him in patchwork moments. The hunger he had felt for warmth, for life. The hatred he had possessed for organisms that bloomed with life, part of a world that he was forever exiled from. The violence with which he lashed out at these creatures, to make them hurt like he hurt. 

He hadn't felt that madness when he had first possessed Francis, even though he hadn't quite remembered himself yet. What was different this time? James remembered hearing the voices from his post beside Francis's bed--but even more than that, he felt a pull, a compulsion that drew him from Francis's side as surely as a magnet draws iron. That hunger--the restless searching that he had felt after they had opened his grave and cast him out into the cold, that had been assuaged by Francis's steady presence, had returned tenfold with the aurora. The dancing lights almost like flames licking up canvas. And the distant screams--

"James?" 

Francis's voice cut through his recollection. He had stepped out of the tent and was looking around into the gloom. He must have grown impatient with waiting, James thought with a mixture of irritation and fondness.

"James, we don't have to talk if you aren't ready, but I need a sign that you’re all right."

 _That_ I'm _all right? I rather think I should be asking you that._

"You just gave me a bit of a fright, is all. I'm quite recovered.” Francis’s voice was gentle, and his kindness reignited James’s anger with himself.

_Yes, thanks to Silna. What if she had not been there? What if--_

James couldn’t finish. Couldn’t bring himself to imagine what he might be capable of. 

Francis took a moment to respond. 

"Silna has a great deal of experience in these matters. She knows her way better than we do, and is able to get to the heart of things quicker than we can, but we would have gotten there, James. You would have come back to yourself. I know you would have."

 _...I am not so sure, Francis._

"What happened, James?"

Just the question James was trying to answer for himself. He took a moment to gather his thoughts.

_Francis...when I came to you on the plain. I hadn't simply woken up to find myself with you. I wandered through this land alone for some time._

Francis nodded; he remembered James’s story.

_Before I found you, I...well, I was in a state not unlike Hartnell's. I was angry and frightened and confused. And I inflicted the hurt I felt on the world. I poisoned the very air around me. I still do not know how I recovered myself. So..so you see, I am not certain how much of your brother actually remains._

James barked out something between a laugh and a sob. 

_Even in death, I'm a fake._

"James, no--"

_I came out here because I could hear the men, Francis. The men that I failed--_

"That _I_ failed--"

_\--but for all that they reminded me of my failures, they also felt like...like home. Like that piece of me that was missing. When you said you couldn't hear anything, I knew I could help you to hear them, too. And then I..._

"You became overwhelmed. James, so did I."

_I overpowered you. I had you trapped. If I caused you serious harm, I could never--_

James broke off with a huff of laughter despite himself. 

"What?"

_I was about to say, if I caused you serious harm, I could never live with myself._

Francis laughed. They had gradually moved closer, and now James could feel the warmth of Francis's body where he curled close to his side. Francis’s poor body, that had not too long ago been crucified upon Jame's transfixed spirit.

_Francis, I'm so sorry._

"James, we have both hurt each other. You have forgiven me your hurts, yes? I forgive you mine.”

Perhaps sensing that James was about to object, he repeated it more forcefully. 

“I _forgive_ you, James. There's nothing more needs to be said."

James sighed, but let the matter rest. They stood under the soft light of the aurora for a few minutes before Francis broke the silence.

"You know I think this little misadventure might actually be a blessing in disguise."

_How so?_

“Those voices--they were coming from the west, weren't they? And when we, ah, came together. You saw the path the aurora made across the plain, didn't you?”

 _...I did,_ James said slowly as he realized where this was going. 

“Well, it appears we now have a bearing. Silna and I talked it over. It could be that you were sent here to navigate for us, James.”

 _I am not possessing you again._ James hoped the hardness of his voice brooked no argument. 

"I'm not asking you to,” Francis reassured hastily. “But you can be our guide, yes? To whatever it is that's calling out to us. Be our Virgil."

 _Your Virgil_ . James smiled up at the sky above, though his heart was heavy. _That suggests a rather difficult journey ahead, does it not?_

“No one ever accused me of being an optimist,” Francis shrugged. Then added, more earnestly, “I trust you, James. I know you’ll not lead us astray.” 

James smiled at Francis, and wished, not for the first time, that they could face one another as men.

 _Let’s extinguish our fears and leave our distrust behind us, then_ , he said with more bravado then he felt. 

Francis grinned and reached out before letting his hand fall to his side, and James realized with a pang of sorrow that he had meant to grasp his arm. 

* * *

Silna and Francis made quick work of packing up camp, and the three of them set off into the west. Anyone happening upon their group would have seen two silent travellers making their way with steady determination across the shale. And sometimes a third, dressed in grey, gliding beside them. But that might have been a trick of the light.

* * *

Francis stopped abruptly without quite knowing why, until he heard James's voice in his ear.

_This is it._

"What is it?" Francis looked around. There was nothing to distinguish this place from the miles they had already walked. The slate under their feet, uninterrupted save for the patches of lichen and grass, stretched out to the horizon in all directions. The aurora above their heads was truly dancing now, pulsing green and purple across the still-dark sky.

Francis looked at Silna. She shook her head, apparently as clueless as he was.

 _There is a tear, or an opening--it's like a passageway,_ came James’s voice in his ear. _Not more than five feet in front of you, Francis. I think that's where we're meant to go._

Francis relayed this information to Silna, who cast a searching look at the spot James indicated.

"And how, ah...how are we to get through?" Francis asked, already moving toward his unseen target with hesitant steps.

_Keep moving forward. Perhaps you don't need to see it to go through it._

Francis walked forward, bringing his hand up to feel through the air. Silna fell into step behind him. It felt a bit like walking across an unfamiliar room in the dark.

_Here it is now._

Francis took a breath, and stepped through to...the plain he had just been walking across. He looked around. Nothing had changed. Silna, standing where the threshold supposedly was, looked equally unimpressed.

"Nothing happened, James."

 _I can see that._ Francis thought he sounded a little peevish.

"Can _you_ step through?"

 _No_ , James sighed. _I tried to go through with the two of you. The passage is still there. I think I can see something beyond it, but I can't--I can't touch it. I can't interact with it at all, other than see it._

"Is there anything you can do?" Francis asked, turning to Silna and switching to Inuktitut. "Anything like what you did before? A spirit you can call on for help?"

Silna was looking at the aurora overhead. Her dark eyes shone in the light.

"Perhaps." She looked at Francis with a furrowed brow and considered him for a moment before continuing.

"When your friend's spirit possessed your body, you could hear the voices of your men?"

Francis nodded, realizing what Silna was thinking. "And the light grew brighter. I could see things I couldn't see before--pathways. I suppose it's worth a try."

 _What is happening?_ James asked.

"Silna has a suggestion. I know you won't like it, James, but I have no other ideas. I think we might need to--"

_I am not possessing you again._

Francis couldn't prevent a fond smile from escaping. He shook his head, and tried to inject as much firmness and comfort into his words as he could.

"I know you feel guilty for what happened before, and I know you are scared it might happen again, but I _trust_ you, James. This time we'll be careful. And we have Silna--”

 _\--who will have to wrestle me out when_ _I lose the plot again._ _It's too risky, Francis. What if she isn't able to save you this time?_

"She won't have to. James, you controlled my body when Hartnell attacked me--

_I should never have done that. Puppeteered you like that. I’m sorry--_

"I'm not! Christ, James, it was only due to your quick thinking then that I'm standing here now! We were able--you and I, together, we were able to do what neither of us could do alone."

Francis looked down at his hand, remembering the way it shoved Hartnell's specter away from him just as it would have a flesh-and-blood man, with Jame's spirit animating it. He had been unsure of Silna's suggestion at first, but he was fast becoming convinced that this was what needed to be done.

_...I can't trust myself, Francis._

"Trust me, then. Please, James."

Francis held his hand out, palm up.

The other times James's spirit had entered Francis's body had been rushed, unexpected affairs. Now that Francis could ready himself for it, he was able to notice it happening. Fingertips, hesitant points of pressure, barely there, touched his open palm. Francis felt a hand settle against his own. It was feather-light and cold and...afraid? Yes, that was James's fear he could feel, shivering against his palm. With the hope that this connection flowed both ways, Francis concentrated his trust and love into his palm, willing James to feel their warmth bubbling up against his fingertips. James' touch grew bolder, the pressure of his hand settling more firmly against Francis's and then there was a push--Francis shuddered as a wave of cold washed all over his body, and then it passed.

 _...James?_ he thought.

 _Francis_ , he heard and he wasn't sure if the relief that suffused his body with the word was James's or his own.

He could feel other things, too, he realized. James's joy, which Francis met with his own until it redounded between them and echoed throughout their body. His surprise, which Francis responded to with smugness and mild reproach until James's irritation frizzled out at him. James's fear still wormed its way through their body and Francis gentled it until it grew calm. And all these eddies and currents of emotion were borne on the sea of the love James felt for Francis, a love that lapped against him and drew out Francis's own love without compelling it. 

_I suppose...I suppose this makes any sort of grand confession on my part redundant._ James's embarrassment fluttered against him. Francis soothed it.

 _I've never felt more naked in my life_ , Francis laughed. And then gentled his tone when he continued, _I hope my feelings are no less apparent to you than yours are to me._

Francis felt the warmth of James's pleasure within him.

_Still, I would like to put it in words. I love you, Francis. I am sorry to only say it now. I don't think I really knew it myself until the end, and by then...it just seemed unfair. Just another burden I was leaving you with._

Francis felt a fierce protectiveness swell through him. If only he could always keep James here, tucked safely under his ribcage, cradled by bone and sinew.

 _You're no burden, James. You were never a burden to me._ Even within his own head his voice sounded rough. _Banish the thought from your head. I love you too much to let you go on believing that._

"Well, Aglooka?"

Francis jumped and turned to face Silna with a flush of embarrassment. How long had he been standing there with his arm outstretched staring into the middle distance? Too long, if the impatience on Silna's face was anything to go by.

Silna's face, which was lit from within by a soft, silver glow, that pulsed and swirled like the aurora above her head. And the aurora! Once again it had broken loose from the sky and draped down on the land, like a sheer curtain of gossamer moved gently by an invisible wind. A fold of pale green light by Silna's shoulder shifted to reveal a sliver of darkness--an opening.

"I see it!" 

Francis walked over to Silna and the opening, which widened and narrowed with the movement of the curtain. Francis had full control of his limbs, but he could tell that James was looking through his eyes. (Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he was looking through James's?) James's apprehension and curiosity were mirrored by his own. Silna watched as Francis reached out their hand, gathered the material in their fingers and drew it back. Beyond was simply darkness, a black so complete it seemed not to have any depth despite the frigid wind that brushed against Francis's face.

"Oh!" Silna gasped and put her hand up to feel the breeze. "I don't see anything, but I think I feel it."

Francis hesitated. Would Silna be able to go through the passage if she couldn't see it?

"Here," he said and offered her his arm. "Hold on to me."

Silna looked at Francis. Her face had taken on the same determined cast it had when she had faced down Francis's ire in his own wardroom a lifetime ago. She grasped his forearm and nodded.

And then Francis, James and Silna walked through the hole in the sky and stepped into the next world.


	4. The Promise

* * *

The first thing James realized was that he was standing in his own body. The second was that he was alone.

He couldn't tell where he was; the darkness was so complete he couldn't see his hands in front of his face, let alone make out anything else. The silence was immense.

"Francis?" he called out into the black. "Francis, can you hear me? Lady Silna?" 

He didn't hear so much as an echo in reply. His voice was swallowed up by the black as soon as it left his mouth. It was like being trapped in a velvet-lined box.

He looked behind him, but the doorway he had just come through was nowhere to be found. Forward, then. He put one foot carefully in front of the other, bare feet touching worn, cool stone. As he walked, the darkness began to lighten. He could look down and make out the ticking on the soiled shirt he had worn on his deathbed. Around him shapes began to resolve themselves. Mysterious, looming bulks became stacks of crates, pillars of wood. Sheets of canvas stretched taut over his head. James's heart was pounding before his conscious mind recognized the place. He stopped short, the hem of Britannia's long robe brushing over his feet, and turned to go back the way he came, only to find his way blocked.

"The men have been asking when you'd join us."

Stephen Stanley stood before James, not as he was when James last saw him, dressed in a clown's patchwork costume and bent under the weight of despair, but as he was years ago in Chianking, neatly dressed, rigidly professional, and abominably clean.

"Dr. Stanley--Stephen," James croaked. "I am so sorry--"

"Sorry?" The corner of Stephen's mouth curved upward. “Why, what have you to be sorry for? Carnevale was _just_ the thing the men needed. I prescribed it to a few of my patients myself.”

“If I had paid more attention, Stephen,” James said. “As your commanding officer...as your friend. If I had known that you had been entertaining such...unnatural thoughts, I might have--”

“Captain,” Stephen cut him off. “I am a doctor. I have been trained to diagnose every malady of the body with a clear and dispassionate eye. I know a hopeless case when I see one. Those men that managed to escape the fire, how many are still alive today?”

James looked away.

“Hm. Can you tell me truthfully that those men who died at your Carnevale would have been better off succumbing to a slow death from starvation and disease out in that wasteland? Why should you feel guilt, when you only helped me to provide them with a release from pain? Why should you begrudge them what you yourself sought out, near the end?” 

“Don't--that is _not_ the same.” James's eyes blurred. “There was still hope for those men.”

“You know there was not, James. Calm yourself, now--you've reopened your wounds.”

James looked down. Red was blossoming down the side of his robe. The tent swayed and he reached out to grab a pole to steady himself.

“Let me take a look.” 

Stephen was rolling up his sleeves and stepping toward him, reaching toward him with his horrible white hands.

“Don't touch me!” James said, or thought he said, because the next thing he knew, Stephen had slipped his hands inside his robe, inside James, his fingers pressing into the wound, then his hand, then his wrist. James looked up. Stephen's face filled his swimming vision. Something was burning. He could smell it. Roast duck, roast duck.

“You're not real,” Stephen’s voice in his ear possessed the same clinical detachment it always had, whether diagnosing a blister or a tumor. “You are hollow inside. Like the rest of us. You belong here, but they do not. You led them here, and we won't give them back.” 

_Francis!_ He had to find Francis. He wrenched himself off Stephen’s searching hand. He refused to look down at himself. The tent was in flames. 

_How do I get out?_

_There!_ As he ran through the flames back out into the darkness, he could hear Stephen’s voice shrieking above the roar of the fire and the snapping of timber.

“It will be an act of kindness! A mercy!”

* * *

Francis parted the flap of the tent and ducked inside. Jopson lay on the cot tucked into the shadows, and he sat up at his captain's entrance.

"None of that, now," Francis said with a dismissive wave of the hand. In his other hand, he held a soft leather-bound Bible. Not his first choice for recreational reading, but perhaps it would provide Jopson with some welcome comfort and distraction.

"You came back, sir," Jopson sighed with relief.

Francis blinked, puzzled. "...Yes, well. I thought I might read to you for a little while, if that sounds agreeable."

Jopson nodded, and settled himself back against the knapsack he was using for a pillow.

Francis eased himself down beside the cot and started flipping through the pages. He opened his mouth to ask if there was a particular book that Jopson would like him to read from, and then froze. Instead of the dense columns of text he expected to see, his own handwriting filled the page.

_Sir John, There are many facts that preoccupy a captain’s imagination. Abandoning his ship and his men should not be among them. Yet I write to announce my resignation as Captain of H.M.S. Terror..._

He rifled through the pages, tearing the delicate paper with shaking fingers.

_Sir John, There are many facts that preoccupy a captain’s imagination. Abandoning his ship and his men should not be among them. Yet I write to announce my resignation as Captain of H.M.S. Terror..._

His cramped writing became more cramped, words squeezed closer and closer together and the pages getting darker until he was flipping through page after page of black ink. He fumbled awkwardly with the book, unable to hold it steady with only one hand, and it flopped to the ground. The fingertips of his remaining hand were smeared with black.

"Why did you leave us?"

Francis jumped. Jopson's eyes were sunken in a hollow, starveling face. They looked like dark pits in the low light of the tent.

"I never left you, Thomas."

Jopson seized Francis's arm with a strength belied by the frailty of his frame.

"You promised you wouldn't leave us. You promised that you would leave no man behind with last burdens."

His breath on Francis's face smelled like rot. Francis tried to ease himself back, but Jopson's grip was inescapable.

"I know, Thomas--I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was kidnapped by Hickey's men. I never would have abandoned you by choice--please believe me."

"Why should I believe a liar and a drunk?” Jopson spat. “You lie to your men; you lie to yourself. Why were you the only one allowed to walk away from all this?"

"I don't know!” Francis sobbed. “God, I don't know!"

"Why should you be allowed to leave us behind again?"

This last was hissed in his ear as Jopson pulled him down, down, into the ground which had softened into a black viscousness. The walls of the tent were melting, dripping down around Francis, locked in an embrace with the thing that had been Jopson. Francis tried to wrench himself free, but there was nothing solid to grab hold of, nothing to stop him sinking down to his hips, his chest, his chin--

"Francis!" Strong hands reached beneath his arms and gripped him around the chest. Francis clung to them as someone started hauling him back, out of the sucking ooze and free from the thing’s grasping, skeletal fingers. Francis's feet found solid ground as he and his rescuer staggered backward, out of the tent that was now collapsing into formlessness before his eyes.

They hit the ground heavily, and Francis turned to see James sprawled on the ground beside him. He was wearing the sweat- and blood-stained shirt he had died in, and his eyes were black caverns in a gaunt face. Francis could have wept at the beauty of him.

"Wait, Captain! Don't go! Don't leave me!" The screams were muffled and seemed to come from underneath them.

Francis looked at James in anguish. "I'm abandoning him again."

James reached out and grasped Francis's hand. Francis tried not to shudder at the iciness of his touch.

"You cannot go back. The only way to help them is to keep moving forward."

Francis sagged against James's bony shoulder and closed his eyes. If only he could rest a moment. James pressed his mouth against Francis's head and nuzzled his hair. It was almost peaceful, if he could ignore the heavy atmosphere of despair all around them.

Francis jerked upright with a gasp.

"Where's Silna?"

* * *

Harry shook so fiercely in her arms that Silna's body shook with him. She stroked his arm and breathed deeply until his breaths began to calm and match her steady in-and-out. They lay there in the soft candlelight of the tent for a few moments; Silna setting her forehead against Harry's back and listening to his breath.

"Why did you come?" Harry asked.

Silna blinked and drew her head back. Harry shifted around so that they were now facing each other on the narrow cot.

"You needed me." 

Harry smiled and rested his forehead against hers. His curls tickled Silna's brow.

"You are good at that."

Silna didn't know what he meant, so she waited for him to continue.

"Understanding what people need. Doing what you can to help them. Whether or not they deserve it."

Silna frowned. "I don't do this because I think you deserve it. I do this because you are my friend."

"And Aglooka? Is he your friend?" 

Silna shook her head, confused. Something wasn't right. There was a hardness to Harry's voice that she had never heard before.

"Aglooka and I...we understand each other."

"Don't be so sure," Harry whispered. He gripped her shoulders and looked intently into her eyes. "I thought I understood these men, too. They're ravenous, Silna. Their hunger knows no bounds."

His fingers dug into Silna's shoulders and his breath was hot against her face. She twisted away from the scent of rot issuing from his mouth.

"They'll take and take until you have no more left to give--"

"Get _off_ me!"

"--Until they've picked you clean to the bone."

Silna shoved hard against Harry and gasped as her hands sank into moist warmth. She broke his hold and scrambled backward, stomach twisting at what she could now see. Harry's chest had been flayed, the muscle below glistening in the candlelight. He had pieces missing. The skin of his flanks and his thighs had been peeled back to reveal the meat underneath, which had been carved away. He looked just as he had the last time Silna had seen him, butchered to feed the people he had once cared for.

"Why are you helping them?" Harry's voice was rough with anguish. His butchered body hauled itself up with jerking, halting movements. "After what they've done to you, to your people?"

"I am doing this _for_ my people."

"Nothing else you've done has made any difference!" Harry screamed. His face was ugly and twisted. Not Harry's face at all. "You couldn't bond with Tuunbaq--you couldn't even stop us from killing him."

Silna took a shaky breath.

"Tuunbaq is my responsibility. There is no one else."

The thing before her lunged, and Silna ran. Ran out of the warm tent into the darkness outside, tears streaming down her face.

* * *

Francis was just beginning to despair of ever being able to locate Silna in the vast, foggy landscape they found themselves in, when Silna herself solved the problem by running full-pelt out of the gloom and crashing straight into James.

They toppled with a combined yell onto the shale. Francis hurried to help them right themselves.

"Silna, thank God. We didn't know if we would ever..." Francis trailed off when he got a good look at Silna's face. Her eyes were red and her lips tight.

"Silna, are you all right?"

"Yes. Yes, I am all right."

James looked questioningly at Francis. Francis shook his head. Silna clearly was not all right, but it would be no use trying to get the story out of her now.

"Do we have a heading, Virgil?" Francis's teasing felt and sounded forced. But it coaxed a smile from James's lips, so Francis considered the effort worth it.

James stood still for a moment, scanning their bleak surroundings, looking or listening for something Francis couldn't sense.

"This way," he said and started walking. Francis and Silna followed.

* * *

Their journey was like a mirror image of the one Silna had taken Francis on after he had woken up under her care. The sounds of footsteps on slate were swallowed up by the fog that surrounded them. Shadows in the mist resolved themselves into abandoned boats or piles of jettisoned supplies--books and scientific instruments and Goldner's tins littered the landscape. Every so often movement in the gloom would cause them to freeze and gather a little closer together, but the figure would only pause a moment to regard them before continuing into the night.

_Shades of death in a universe of death._

Sometimes Francis thought he heard someone calling his name, but when he would stop to listen, he heard nothing. At these times James would look at him and touch his wrist to gently encourage him to keep moving. If Silna heard these phantom voices, too, she made no sign. She walked with her eyes on the ground in front of her, deep in thought.

Francis did not know how long they had been walking in this murky, lifeless place when they saw it. Rising out of the mist before them was the framework of some vast structure. Francis tried to make sense of it as they drew closer. Was it the frame of a ship? Something like rafters arched toward the sky, silhouetted against the horizon where soft green light began to pulse; after so long walking through the grey, Francis's eyes hurt at the bloom of color, muted though it was. As they approached, the mist thinned to reveal more of the structure, but Francis's confusion only increased. It wasn't a ship, or any kind of building. The arches sprouted out of a row of irregular-sized boulders that led toward...a skull?

The three travelers slowed to a stop. Before them lay the skeletal remains of some massive creature. Its oblong skull was longer than James was tall, and its ribcage--what Francis had assumed was the frame of a ship--arched high above their heads.

"What was this?" James murmured as he drew closer to the skeleton. Francis shook his head in bafflement, before he noticed something. The creature's skull, rather than sporting sets of fangs, had a set of unnervingly human-like teeth, teeth that Francis remembered glistening with drool as a massive jaw opened wide to swallow him whole--

"Tuunbaq," Silna said, just as Francis reached the same impossible conclusion.

"Tuunbaq--the creature?" James's baffled face turned from Francis to the skeleton then back again. "It was never this big, surely?"

"No," Francis agreed. He couldn't make sense of it. _Just add it to the growing list, then._

The three of them approached the Tuunbaq cautiously. As they drew nearer, the ribcage loomed above them, and Francis could see that the bones were not entirely bare. Some of the meat still clung stubbornly to the ribs--

_That's not meat._ Francis realized with horror as he quickened his steps. Ignoring James's call to be careful he hurried over to where the animals' stomach would have been and looked up.

Sprouting from the ribs like mushrooms from the trunk of a tree were men. Mr. Collins. Sergeant Tozer. Lieutenant Gore. Hickey.

Tom Blanky.

Their torsos grew up and away from the ribs that supported them. Their lower halves were lost, fused together with the remains of the creature into a fleshly mess. They seemed to be sleeping, and Francis thanked God for this smallest of mercies.

"Oh my God." James's voice echoed the horror that Francis was unable to express.

"What do we do?” Francis gasped. “How do we--how do we help them? James?"

James shook his head, staring up in mute shock at what remained of their men.

Francis moved down the line of men, under the ribs of the Tuunbaq. He felt as though he were entering a forest, tree limbs laden with strange fruit. 

"Why were we brought here? There must be something--"

He stopped as he felt his coat snag against something. He looked down and saw a thin white hand clinging to the fur of his coat. Hickey's eyes glittered from behind stringy hair and his mouth was an open wound as he strained his body toward Francis. Francis tore himself from Hickey's grasp and jostled into Collins, who gasped awake and blinked bleary eyes at Francis. Francis watched as his expression morphed from confusion to realization to horror.

"Mr. Collins," Francis whispered. Then Collins opened his mouth and screamed. His screams shattered the cathedral-like stillness of the Tuunbaq’s remains and echoed through the grey world. 

James began pulling Francis backward as the other men started to rouse at the sound of Collins’s shrieks. Cries of shock and wails of despair rang out through the air, a cacophony of horror. 

Silna had already retreated from the commotion. As Francis and James joined her, the cries of their men at their backs, Francis realized that James was shaking.

“I am so sorry, Francis,” James whispered. “I should never have brought you here. You don’t belong here...” 

Francis tried to find words of comfort or hope to offer James, but felt only a hollowness inside himself. Wordlessly he took James in his arms, and they held each other as the screams of their men gradually subsided into moans and sobbing. 

Francis jumped when he felt Silna touch his shoulder. James pulled away, averting his face as if embarrassed, and Francis reluctantly let him go.

“I think I know what we must do.” Silna’s words betokened hope, but her face was grave.

“Anything.”

Silna looked over to Tuunbaq’s hulking form, silhouetted against the glowing green sky. She contemplated the sight for a moment before continuing, choosing her words carefully.

“Tuunbaq is trapped here. He cannot move into the next world because his death was never properly honored. His imprisonment is keeping your men imprisoned, too.”

Silna paused, and worked her jaw gently. Her tongue must have been paining her. 

“You must honor Tuunbaq’s death,” she continued, regarding Francis gravely. “Give thanks to him for giving his life for you.” 

Francis blinked at Silna, and for a moment felt sure that his Inuktitut was not as good as he previously thought, because Silna could not have just told him to thank the thing that had murdered so many of his men, the ravenous monster that stared Francis in the eye and dragged him by inches toward his slavering maw. 

“‘Giving his life for me’?” Francis echoed, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. “I had to fight with every ounce of my being to put that thing down. It nearly brought me down with it. Or don’t you remember that?” 

Silna’s eyes flashed with anger.

“You have hunted with our men? How does the hunt always end? How must it end?”

Francis remembered Siku working the caribous’ stomachs out from the slits in their bellies, the careful way he held the glistening organs, the reverence with which he buried them under stones.

Silna continued. “You must honor the spirit of every creature you kill. Tuunbaq is trapped here because his spirit has not been duly honored. Your men are trapped here with him.”

“Yes, and how many of those men did he kill?” 

“He gave his life to preserve yours.”

“Well, I don’t want it!” Francis roared.

Silna looked at him, searching his face for something. Francis knew she was thinking of their argument in the great cabin on Terror, just as he was. _Why do you want to die?_

_Do I want to die?_ Francis remembered the desperation with which he had hauled on the chain linking him to the Tuunbaq, straining with every fiber of his being to stay alive, to keep himself from being dragged inch by inexorable inch into death’s gaping maw. Where had that desperate desire to live gone? Francis sometimes found himself looking back with wonder at that man facing the Tuunbaq. He could no longer recognize himself in him. 

“Francis, what is happening?” James reached out and touched his elbow, and Francis felt the chill of his fingers even through his fur. Francis looked at the shade of his friend, who had fought so hard to cling to the gift that Francis wanted to throw away, and was suddenly filled with such confusion and grief and self-disgust that for a moment he couldn’t speak. 

James waited. Francis took a shaking breath and said simply, “She wants me to honor Tuunbaq.” 

James didn’t scoff or stare in disbelief or do any of the things that Francis would have expected him to do in their previous life. His fingers found Francis’s and clasped them gently. 

“Why does she want you to do that?” he asked.

Francis looked up at Silna, who was watching them patiently. 

“As a way of giving thanks. That I am alive and he isn’t.” 

“You do not feel this is something to be grateful for?”

Francis’s eyes burned. He swallowed around the thickness in his throat and confessed in a whisper, “James, I do not know what I am still doing here.”

James took Francis’s hand in both of his and pressed it to his mouth.

“I told you, before, that God wants you to live. I still believe that.”

“I don’t deserve--”

“It’s not about deserving. It does not matter why you were given this gift; what matters is what you will do with it now that you have it.” 

James looked at Francis and smiled. 

“I know you will do good things with this gift, Francis.” 

And then James leaned forward and pressed his lips against Francis’s. James’s lips, like his hands, were cold, but Francis deepened the kiss and drew him in tight as though he could share his living warmth with James. 

Too soon, they drew apart. James gazed patiently at Francis. Francis took a deep breath and walked over to Silna, who had politely averted her gaze from her travelling companions and toward the macabre scene before them. 

“I am sorry, Silna,” Francis said. “I would like to do as you say, if you would help me.”

Silna didn’t smile at Francis, but the tightness around her mouth softened and she nodded. 

Silna led Francis and James back under the shadow of Tuunbaq’s remains. Most of Francis’s men had quieted, although their murmurs and sighs still echoed around the cavernous rib cage.

“We should bring part of Tuunbaq’s remains back with us,” Silna whispered. “And bury it in the living world. Give him the respect he was originally denied.” 

“All right,” Francis whispered back, looking with some doubt at the massive skeleton surrounding them. “Do you have any suggestions?” 

“What is it?” James asked, and Francis explained their dilemma.

“...I might actually be able to help with that,” James said as he crossed carefully over to the space between Tuunbaq’s lower ribs and the cradle of his pelvis. He crouched down and touched the stony ground. 

“I feel warmth here.” James looked up at Francis and Silna who were moving to join him. “I do not know if this is what you need, but it might be worth investigating.” 

Francis turned to translate for Silna, but she was already kneeling down beside James and brushing aside stones. Francis joined them on the ground and the three of them began to dig beneath the shale. Instead of the hard-packed, icy dirt Francis expected to meet their fingertips, soft, reddish earth revealed itself to their questing hands. As they scooped out handfuls of soil Francis began to feel the warmth himself--it grew and faded rhythmically, like the beating of a pulse. The earth became moist and then muddy, a deep dark red that stained their hands. The hole was deep and dark and hot when Francis’s hand at last encountered something smooth and solid. He, Silna, and James worked it free and Francis pulled it into his lap. He brushed blood-red mud off the object, knowing what he would discover underneath. 

Tuunbaq’s stomach. 

It was big, but big in a way that Francis imagined was proportionate to the size of the creature as he remembered him. He looked at Silna, and she nodded. This is what they would bring back to the living world. 

As though sensing their silent agreement, the green lights dancing across the sky flooded the barren plain below, and the billowing curtain of light that surrounded them parted briefly to reveal a glimpse of the wide tundra under a star-studded sky--home.

Francis cast one last look at the men grafted onto Tuunbaq’s body. _Not long now_ , he promised them silently as he cradled the stomach in his arms and approached the tear in the veil. He looked back at Silna and James.

“Are we ready?” 

“Ready,” Silna nodded.

James didn’t respond. He was gazing at the Tuunbaq and the men they were leaving behind. 

“James?” Francis prodded. The sound of his name drew James from his thoughts. He turned to Francis, and Francis’s stomach plunged when he saw the look of regret on James’s face. 

“I am staying here, Francis.”

“No, James,” Francis said, and hated how his voice trembled. 

“Francis…” James said, and his voice was unbearably gentle. Francis wanted to scream. “I belong here. With the men. We do not know what will happen when you and Silna release Tuunbaq’s spirit. I expect they will need someone to guide them to the next world.”

Francis’s heart was beating a painful staccato in his chest. He turned to Silna and with a shaking hand passed her Tuunbaq’s still-warm stomach. 

“Could you--give us some time. Go through, and I will follow.”

Silna’s eyes flicked between Francis and James. She frowned, but took the stomach.

“Do not be long,” she cautioned.

“No. I promise.”

With one last, lingering look at the two of them, Silna turned to the opening and stepped through. The sky flashed and the curtain of light whipped up in an unfelt wind as she went. 

Francis crossed over to where James was lingering and grasped his arm. He stared for a moment at the rust-colored stains on James’s shirt, the shirt he had been wearing when he had breathed his last. 

“I already let you go once,” Francis whispered. “I cannot do this again, James. Please don't ask me to.” 

James rested his forehead against Francis’s and closed his eyes. His voice, when it came, was a gentle breath against Francis’s cheeks. 

“Francis, if I could stay by your side as your shadow for the rest of your life, I would. I would follow you back to your chosen people, I would shadow your steps during the day, and watch over you at night. And if that were the closest I could come to sharing a life with you, I would do it gladly, and be ready to lead you to the other side when your time came.”

James’s hands had come up to cradle the back of Francis’s head. He stroked Francis’s hair and took a shaking breath. 

“But you know that is not what would happen. I do not belong in that world anymore, and remaining with you would warp me, would twist me into something unrecognizable. I would no longer be the man you love. I would become something dangerous, something that would hurt you--has _already_ hurt you.” 

James’s voice had begun to waver. Francis shook his head, opened his mouth to object, but fell silent when he saw the tears in James’s eyes. 

“I cannot bear the thought of that happening,” James pleaded. “Of losing the love I have for you. You loved me enough to let me go once. Please love me enough to do it once more.”

“Oh, James…” Francis drew James’s head down to rest against his shoulder as James’s body began to shake with silent sobs. Francis held him close and stroked his brittle hair and tried to impress every detail of this moment into his memory. James’s scent--the sweat and blood and camphor oil lingering on his skin, the hint of macassar oil in his hair. The feeling of lean muscle and knobs of bone under the worn linen of his shirt. The sound of his quiet sighs in his ear as his breathing steadied and slowed. 

Another flash of light illuminated the world around them and Francis and James startled apart.

“You need to leave, Francis,” said James, looking up at the sky. The aurora danced above them and around them, its folds weaving between their bodies. 

Francis nodded, and took James’s hand in his. 

“You do what you can in this world, and I’ll do what I can in mine. And we will find each other again someday. I promise.” 

James smiled. “Not too soon, I hope.” 

Francis cupped James’s cheek and regarded him silently for a moment, and then he drew James into a kiss. James deepened the kiss, parting his lips and pressing the whole length of his body against Francis’s, as though trying to soak up as much of Francis’s warmth as he possibly could. _Take all of it, I give it freely_ , Francis thought, and embraced James with all his warmth, his affection, his love. 

Another ominous flash of light had them breaking apart too soon. Francis had to force himself to leave now, or he never would. He let James go. He reached out to grasp the edge of the veil and drew it back. On the other side--a clear sky, the stars, Silna. 

Francis turned back one last time. Tuunbaq’s skeleton a still hulk against the sky. The aurora pulsing above. And James, gazing at him with such love that Francis knew it would take all the strength he had to turn away.

“I love you, James,” Francis said in a rough voice that felt like it had been dragged up from the very depths of him. 

James gave him a brave smile. “I love you, Francis.” 

And then Francis stepped through the veil and let the passageway close behind him.

* * *

Francis and Silna buried Tuunbaq’s stomach under a sky just beginning to brighten with the dawn. 

After they had finished Francis stood and regarded the small cairn they had built. With each stone he had placed, he had sent a silent word of thanks to Tuunbaq, to James, to Silna, to the Netsilik, to his men. 

“Do you think it worked?” he asked Silna.

Silna considered the cairn. “Healing takes time. And Tuunbaq is not the only way to maintain balance. This is our responsibility, too.” 

Francis thought of the people he had left behind--of Taktuq and Ujarak and Kallik. Were they worried about him? How was Taktuq faring? Perhaps Francis could help him to adjust to living life one-handed. 

_James is needed there_ , Francis thought. _And I am needed here. And someday, we will find each other again._

The thought didn’t cheer him, exactly, but he felt more at peace than he had in a long time.

Francis looked at Silna. She was gazing at Tuunbaq’s cairn in quiet contemplation. Francis hoped she felt a similar sense of peace. 

Perhaps sensing Francis’s eyes on her, Silna drew herself out of her musings and returned Francis’s gaze. Then, in silent accord, they turned toward the east and began the long walk home. 

**Author's Note:**

> The following are some of the sources I used in my research for this story.
> 
> [This website](https://uphere.ca/) has articles about modern life in the far North, including Nunavut.
> 
> They also wrote [an article](https://uphere.ca/articles/franklin-ghosts) about the legacy of the Franklin Expedition.
> 
> I found [this website](https://www.firstpeoplesofcanada.com/index.html) helpful for its photos of Inuit tools and clothing.
> 
> [This book](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Netsilik_Eskimo.html?id=sZ4QAAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description) was published in 1989, and uses some dated terms, but I found it helpful for its description of the ways in which the Netsilik hunt caribou and honor the animals they hunt, the way their communities are organized, and how that organization changes with the seasons.
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YK5SUOF44U) is one part of a short documentary series that also feels a bit dated, but I found it helpful for understanding some day-to-day realities of traditional Inuit life.
> 
> [Here](https://travelnunavut.ca/plan-and-book/visitor-information/weather-climate/) is a very cool calendar that helped me see when different foods are in season in Nunavut. 
> 
> [This book](https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015014744067) is a collection of stories from Inuit storytellers translated into English, and includes a report of the fate of Franklin's men. (If you can’t access it and would like to check it out, just message me [on tumblr](https://honeybeehum.tumblr.com/)!)
> 
> This is a fantasy/horror story, and while I have done research to depict Inuit life with respect (such as the philosophy that guides their relationships with the environment), my descriptions of the world beyond the veil are my own invention, inspired by poems like The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. They do not represent actual Inuit belief regarding the afterlife. I have done my best to portray Inuit customs and religious beliefs with sensitivity, but if anything I have written is hurtful or harmful to the Inuit people, please reach out to me so I can revise and do better.


End file.
